THE EMPTY SEAS:
It's time to stop devouring the most overfished and worst-managed seafoods
Maclean's Mon 03
Nov 2003
Byline: JOHN DEMONT

REMEMBER when eating
sea food wasn't something to feel guilty about? You know, back in the
days when fish was the item of choice for the health-conscious on the
restaurant menu? Suddenly ordering the wrong entree off the From the Oceans
list is about as acceptable as felling a stand of old-growth forest to
make a parking space for your SUV. The list of endangered fish species
is growing depressingly long. We all know about the spectacular near-disappearance
of the Atlantic cod, once among the world's largest fish stocks.

Now add wild Atlantic
and Pacific salmon to the imperilled list, along with such traditional
meal fare as orange roughy and Atlantic sea scallops. Sharks -- those
ferocious predators of the deep since prehistoric times -- are dwindling
to a precious few. The world could soon see the last marlin, swordfish,
monkfish, snapper or Alaska king crab. Even Charlie the tuna could be
hurtling toward extinction.

What's happening?
Above all, decades of huge-scale overfishing have taken a startling toll
on the oceans. The seas are plundered by gigantic high-tech trawlers that
scoop everything in their wake, and longliners that unspool miles of nets
and lines with hooks baited for tuna, swordfish and other top-of-the-food-chain
giants. Even smaller boats, equipped with sonar, global positioning systems
and other technology, are fishing deeper and in more difficult conditions
than ever before.

Couple all this technology
with the sky-high prices that catches command and it's not hard to see
why the large fish in the sea have been decimated.

"We've found
a way to remove every barrier nature has placed between us and catching
fish," laments Daniel Pauly, a marine biologist at the University
of British Columbia and one of the world's leading experts on the global
fishery. "It's no longer man against the elements. It's industrial
warfare against things with brains the size of peas."

But while overfishing
takes the blame, the truth is not enough is known about the basic biology
of the oceans to know what else may be playing a part. With close to 95
per cent of the world's seas unexplored beneath the surface, a pioneering
global scientific effort on the scale of the human genome project was
launched in May 2000. The Census of Marine Life, a 10-year, $1-billion
project involving more than 300 scientists from 53 countries is attempting
to find out what's in the world's oceans, from the types of marine bacteria
to where exactly Pacific salmon go when they return to the sea. "There
are amazing discoveries awaiting us," says Ron O'Dor, renowned marine
biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax and the census's chief scientist.

With the project identifying
three new fish species each week, O'Dor expects they'll have another 5,000
by 2010 to add to the known total of 15,304. And there may be up to two
million other marine animals and plants waiting to be discovered, according
to an interim report released last week. "We only understand a tiny
amount of what's down there and what impacts we're having," says
O'Dor. The project may help explain some mysteries of the deep. When fishing
for some species like cod is halted, for instance, why don't stocks rebound?
"It's tough to make decisions about the fisheries without knowing
what all the biological players are," says O'Dor.

With a global tragedy of immense
scale unfolding, it's also hard to be optimistic, says Ransom Myers, another
well-known Dalhousie marine biologist. In May he released an alarming
study showing that only 10 per cent of all large fish -- including tuna,
swordfish, marlin, cod, skate and flounder -- are left in the sea. "With
industrialized fisheries," he says, "we have rapidly reduced
the resource base of these species from the tropics to the poles."
He points to the Atlantic fishery, once dependent on cod and other groundfish
to fill its nets. Now almost all its revenues come from snow crab, shrimp
and lobster and, increasingly, aquaculture. "That's what the global
fishery is now," Myers says, "the stuff at the bottom of the
food chain and farmed fish."

Where's it all headed? The health
benefits of seafood -- a low-cholesterol source of important protein,
oils and fatty acids -- ensure that demand remains high. But what's still
left in the seas is looking less and less appetizing. Canada's fishery
is turning to the likes of jellyfish and sea cucumbers, for export to
the Far East. Meanwhile, ever-expanding fish farms pollute the seas with
antibiotics-ridden, disease-carrying feces, or set the scene for escaped
species to cause havoc in environments far from their natural homes.

How does the average consumer keep
up with the ever-changing list of what's OK and what's forbidden? A few
enterprising companies have sprung up to peddle ecologically responsible,
"guilt-free" fish. The British-based Marine Stewardship Council,
which emerged from a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever,
the world's largest buyer of seafood, issues labels for stores and restaurants
to use to verify that a fish was caught in a sustainable fishery. Sobeys
Inc., like most of Canada's supermarket chains, counts on its suppliers
to adhere to any international laws -- and to ensure their stores are
not filled with the kinds of fish that are going to draw the unwanted
attention of environmentalists.

But there's no guarantee of any
direct relationship between the sustainability of a fish and its availability
on store shelves.

If you're determined to eat with
a clean conscience, you may have to broaden your tastes a little. Look
for striped bass or catfish at the supermarket or your local eatery. They're
a safe bet -- they're both abundant, well-managed species. It's not exactly
an order of clams and chips on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, or a plate
of coquilles St. Jacques (with their heart-stopping combo of scallops
and mushrooms in a rich wine sauce) overlooking Vancouver's English Bay.
But choosing environmentally friendly seafood should be good for the soul
-- if not the best for the taste buds.

Check with the Audubon Society
for a list of recommendations on what fish are at risk.